"There was a lecturer who took me to hospital when I was sick and sat with me in A&E for five hours."

I never intended to be a journalist. I always wanted to be a dancer and in the West End. People didn’t even used to call me by my real name; they used to call me ‘the dancer’. But then I got sick, so through the next five years or so I was in and out of illness.

Then one day on a whim I decided to start writing. Some website really took to it and offered me paid work. Because of this I then decided I was going to go to uni, but as I was really sick at this point my parents didn’t want me to be alone. They live in Switzerland so it was really tough to make that decision.

I got a really high mark in my first year and got on the academic list of excellence. And then I got the same in my second year. I also won the University of The Third Age Prize for best second year student.

This is the first place I found myself again. I could finally see myself as something else other than a dancer, and now I only ever see myself as a journalist. There was a lecturer who took me to hospital when I was sick and sat with me in A&E for five hours. You don’t really find people like that everywhere. I didn’t have that for the first 21 years of my life, so to have him and just the people here made me find myself again.